Overtime Elite’s top team, the YNG Dreamerz, traveled from its home base of Atlanta to Brooklyn for a game this December, but the leading scorer in the league—which is designed to develop basketball stars—wasn’t on the court that night for the Dreamerz during a 108-70 win over the Diamond Doves.

Instead, 6-foot-1, 19-year-old Eli Ellis sat on the bench with tape ensconcing his ankle, a black hoodie replacing his uniform and a brown textured crop of hair on his head. Even if Ellis’ No. 15 jersey didn’t grace the court, as he nursed an injury suffered the night before, it littered the stands, where kids not much younger than himself awaited their chance to meet the basketball-playing social media star. (Or is he a TikTok-posting basketball star?)

After the game, the longest autograph line formed in front of Ellis. It didn’t matter that he didn’t play that night; Ellis’ fans had already seen him plenty. 

If you want to glimpse what the future of basketball looks like, in an era of viral videos and NIL, follow Eli Ellis. On TikTok, more than 1.2 million people already do. Hundreds have joined his $189/year online community on hoops and hype-building (launched on skool.com) as well, hoping to follow his steps. The Hickory, N.C. native used social media to get on the court with some of high school basketball’s best players, then led Overtime’s all-star league in scoring, earning MVP honors and an offer from South Carolina last year. 

Bad ankle and all, Ellis happily signed every sheet of paper foisted upon him in the Crown Heights community center, posed for every selfie and dapped up every fan until his postgame receiving line finally disappeared.

Additionally, Ellis didn’t let his injury stop him from posting in New York City, sharing clips from the games, chronicling his injury and dancing with crutches in a series of TikToks that garnered more than 500,000 views. Meanwhile YouTube is littered with highlights of his play while healthy, with some recaps surpassing two million visits.

“I think today in high school basketball, he is the single most influential player,” Overtime CEO Dan Porter said. “I’m not telling you that he’s the number one pick in the NBA Draft …  if you want to just measure influence, as opposed to vertical, I would say that he’s probably the most influential player with the biggest fan base.”

But Ellis is still trying to prove that he’s worth the attention.

Ellis first hit Overtime leadership’s radar in summer 2021 before his ninth-grade year, as the company’s social media team latched onto his highlights—and his personality. A year later Ellis became the ninth signee for Overtime Elite in 2022, turning down a salary to preserve his NCAA eligibility while agreeing to play alongside future NBA lottery picks Alexandre Sarr and the Thompson twins, Amen and Ausar.

Homeschooled at the time of the tryout invite, Eli said that his mother was skeptical. “Step on the court, and I’m playing against 10 NBA guys, so it just didn’t make sense for me to perform at that level,” Ellis said in an interview after the game—and postgame autograph session—in Brooklyn. “But I knew if I just got the most out of it, played as hard as I could, and worked on my social media side outside of that, then it was gonna be a win for me.”

Ellis was not in ESPN’s Top 100 ranking of recruits for the class of 2025, but Overtime still saw a star in the making. The youngest player to sign with the league as a sophomore, he was the last pick in OTE’s first draft, serving as a role player alongside the Thompsons. 

Last season was a different story. He scored 33.4 points per game alongside his brother Isaac on the YNG Dreamerz, coached by his father Jeremy. He committed to the Gamecocks in November 2023. As a 19-year-old senior, he’s averaging 32.2 points in OTE competition this season. In December, he set the OTE scoring record—again—by dropping 55 points in a 119-95 win over RWE.

YNG gear has become some of the league’s best-selling merch in the meantime. Though he still hasn’t cracked ESPN’s Top 100, Ellis has risen into the 60’s on other rankings from Rivals and 247Sports.

“If anyone wants to watch Eli Ellis, he plays in the OTE and sometimes those games, they have a couple of wacky rules, and I think it’s easy to get caught up in all of the flair that’s happening,” South Carolina head coach Lamont Paris said after Ellis officially made his college decision. “But make no mistake, Eli Ellis’ game is founded in real basketball ability and feel. I think that’s the ticket ultimately for him to be a high-level player.”

Off the court, Ellis also plays the role of teacher. He launched Ellis Academy on skool.com in 2024, offering weekly coaching calls and community conversations for high schoolers hoping to receive Division I attention. More than 600 kids have signed up since launch through either monthly ($27/month) or yearly memberships, and the site currently shows roughly 350 active participants.

In addition to basketball drills, the program provides guidance on building a social media presence as well as managing the mental ups and downs of the sport. The most common question Ellis gets from his online academy students, he has said, is how he deals with friends commenting on his content production habits, calling him corny or uncool.

“These kids can’t relate to AJ Dybantsa or Cameron Boozer,” Ellis said of the consensus top prospects in the 2025 prep class. “But they can watch me play and see me not have one single dunk, barely jump off the ground, not go by anybody and go, ‘Oh, I can do that!’”

He encourages every kid to think about their digital presence while working on their on-court handle. “If you can get your social media up to a big number, then it leads to more interest [from] college coaches,” Ellis told The Post and Courier earlier this week. There’s money to be made too. “A lot of college athletes don’t realize if you could just spend 10 to 15 minutes a day making some content, 30 minutes a day, it’s worth hundreds of thousands a year,” Ellis recently said on fellow NIL star Flau’jae Johnson’s podcast.

Porter said the two talked for multiple hours about Ellis’ academy side hustle earlier this season, discussing pricing strategies and churn management. Soon after, Ellis added the Overtime CEO on LinkedIn. “I was like, ‘Wow, this guy’s gonna have my job in 10 years,’” Porter said.

At OTE, Ellis is one-of-a-kind. But he also might be emblematic of a generation of hoopers who recognize their earning potential is tied to more than their scouting grade. Most notably, Jared McCain built up a TikTok following of 4.5 million while beating expectations on the court in high school, at Duke and most recently as a Philadelphia 76ers rookie. Many videos on Ellis’ TikTok page show him and his family doing anything but playing hoops.